White House leaked it. It's called framing the debate with a preemptive strike.
"GAO report on war sparks criticism from White House" by Anne Flaherty/Associated Press August 31, 2007
WASHINGTON - An independent assessment concluding that Iraq has made little political progress in recent months despite an influx of US troops drew a fierce pushback from the White House yesterday. President Bush, who planned to meet today at the Pentagon with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is nearing a decision on a way forward in Iraq.
In a draft report circulated this week, the Government Accountability Office concluded that at least 13 of the 18 political and security goals for the Iraqi government have not been met.
Administration officials swiftly objected to several of the findings and dismissed the report as unrealistically harsh because it assigned pass-or-fail grades to each benchmark, with little nuance. GAO officials briefed congressional staff on their findings behind closed doors, promising the aides an unvarnished assessment of Iraq when an unclassified version of the report is publicly released Sept. 4.
White House spokesman Tony Snow: "The real question that people have is: What's going on in Iraq? Are we making progress? Militarily, is the surge having an impact? The answer is yes. There's no question about it."
But Democrats and some Republicans say the military progress made in recent weeks is not the issue. If Baghdad politicians refuse to reach a lasting political settlement that can influence the sectarian-fueled violence, the increase in troops is useless, they said.
Representative Jason Altmire, Democrat of Pennsylvania, after his recent trip to Iraq:
"By almost every measurable measure of progress, they have not only failed to progress, they have in many cases gone backwards. That to me is the most troubling part of the experience that we had - because we can see, on the military side, our men and women are doing what has been asked of them."
The Pentagon and State Department provided lengthy objections to the GAO this week in the hopes of swaying the findings.
Geoff Morrell, Pentagon press secretary, said yesterday that after reviewing a draft of the GAO report, policy officials "made some factual corrections" and "offered some suggestions on a few of the actual grades." He declined to elaborate on what the Pentagon was disputing.
Tom Casey, State Department deputy spokesman, said the GAO should at least note the progress made when ruling that Iraq has failed to meet a specific benchmark.
"Panel Will Urge Broad Overhaul of Iraqi Police" by David S. Cloud/New York Times August 31, 2007
WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 — In addition to questioning recommendations in the Jones commission report, Pentagon officials on Thursday also challenged the scathing assessment of political and military progress in Iraq by the Government Accountability Office; the officials said they had asked the agency to revise several of its assessments before making the findings public.
In a draft version of the report, the G.A.O. concluded that Iraq had failed to meet 13 of 18 military and political goals agreed to by President Bush. Pentagon officials are now arguing that two of the failing grades should be upgraded to passing, several Pentagon officials said.
The G.A.O. report was ordered by lawmakers as a parallel assessment to the Petraeus-Crocker report and the agency’s presumably more negative portrayal of the conditions in Iraq was immediately seized upon by Democrats as evidence of the need to switch course in Iraq.
In taking issue with the G.A.O. report, Pentagon officials said that Iraq had succeeded in delivering the promised number of army units to Baghdad as part of its contribution to the stepped-up security effort there, the officials said. The officials also challenged the G.A.O.’s finding that raised doubts about whether sectarian killings had fallen in Iraq in recent months.
Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, defended the White House approach, saying: “The real question that people have is, What’s going on in Iraq? Are we making progress? Militarily, is the surge having an impact? The answer’s yes.”
Here is the Times' editorial take:
"More Realism, Less Spin...
A new report from Congress’s investigative arm provides a powerful fresh dose of nonpartisan realism about Iraq as President Bush tries to spin people into thinking that significant — or at least sufficient — progress is being made.
Mr. Bush earlier this year ordered a massive buildup of American troops in Iraq in a desperate attempt to salvage his failed strategy and stave off Congressional moves to bring the forces home. Despite the cost of more American lives, he argued that he was buying a period of relative calm for Iraqi politicians to achieve national reconciliation.
Two things, however, are already clear. Iraq’s leaders have neither the intention nor the ability to take advantage of calm, relative or otherwise. And a change in strategy seems the farthest thing from Mr. Bush’s mind.
He used the August vacation — when lawmakers were largely laying low at home — to reassert his determination to stay the course. The White House also let it be known that it plans to ask Congress for more money — perhaps another $50 billion — beyond $600 billion already requested to maintain the counteroffensive in Iraq into spring 2008. Some people think the administration will get it.
Mr. Bush has invoked Vietnam to argue against leaving Iraq. That argument is specious, but there is a chilling similarity between the two American foreign policy disasters. In Vietnam, as in Iraq, American presidents and military leaders went to great lengths to pretend that victory was at hand when nothing could be farther from the truth."
[The Times knows the war is lost, despite how their news pages cover it]
